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ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they're doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
I don't understand how would a 100% land tax work? If you own a 300k house you'd have to pay 300k in taxes every year? So basically making housing unaffordable except for the ultra rich?
Also why would anyone build apartments if they weren't going to make a profit? What's the incentive? No one would do anything if they couldn't make money doing it.
If landlords are bad or too expensive why not move, another building another state another lower cost of living area? Agreed rents are super high but that's mostly in dense urban areas. You're paying a premium for location.
I'm really not seeing any honest answers here about how to fix this problem. Besides the government should provide everyone free housing? How would that work how would you decide who gets to live where? Who gets the apartment on the lake vs next to the airport/oil refinery?
Like I get it housing is expensive but I haven't seen anything here that would actually help fix that? Ironically more landlords and more apartments would probably help.
Why not just move? Yeah I'm gonna tell my childrens mother that I'm taking off. Just can't afford this shit anymore, sorry. Then get hit with the inevitable child support payments that will end you up in jail in no time anyway.
Just toss all that shit aside and move somewhere rural and shitty so you can afford it! (Oops, forgot to mention that pay is also significantly lower now so you still can't afford anything )
The main driving factor is this "down payment" shit. A person who has a bunch of money can just go get a house and not actually pay for it fully. They can still loose all that money, there's risk there if they can't pay. And that's the difference. Everyone else can't put down that much money. So they can pay a landlord more money than the landlord pays monthly, but they don't have 2 or $300,000 bucks at risk each and every day. I mean, the landlord is payed for the risk they incur.
So a renter only loses a small amount of money if they fail to keep paying rent. However, they pay more each month and also, they loose relatively more when they loose housing and become homeless. So the situation is fucked up. You could for example barely own a house and then stretch and buy a second house with not much left in savings. If you're in that situation, you're a different landlord than a bank who basically only incurs a monetary risk and not a loosing everything you got risk.
Because of this. Maybe we should bring down the "down payment" bar shit. I mean the house could be destroyed by a renter or an owner, but the house will still be there. Banks literally can only lose a little bit of time between ownerships. So if you could purchase a house with just $5000, for example, that would be pretty easy to do for most people who have a job. At least relatively much easier to $300k. You can sell your house to the bank and get yourself a new house. Literally nobody loses if the down payment level is lowered to something reasonable. Ultimately, the banks will always own houses. So why not just state it clearly....you don't own this house but if you had 3 lifetimes, you could. And bring down the payments accordingly to people's income. Keep it locked at 10%. If we did this, what would prevent you from owning a mansion? Okay limit housing to reasonable sizes? Control traffic by only allowing people to own near where they work? So you live 1 mile from work and then you find a new job, congratulations! Now you can be part of the people who can buy near that area.
I don't know nothing. I'm just posting some stupid ass ideas.
And the main factor driving down payments is housing prices, which are driven by landlords. Less landlords > less scarcity > lower prices > lower down payments.
On top of that, housing cooperatives exist, which can provide the benefits of renting (lower monthly payments than a mortgage, economy of scale for repairs & construction, less financial liability for the individual) without the negative effects of a for-profit landlord. (you progressively own more of your unit over time instead of never owning any of it, you pay lower monthly rates than you would to a for-profit entity)
They even have different ownership models, which could give more choice for pricing. For instance, the non-ownership model means you pay a lower rate, just the cost of continuing the providing and upkeep of the housing, with no additional profit margin, but you don't end up owning any of the unit you live in. But the ownership model means often paying a bit higher pricing, but in turn, getting to actually own the unit you live in, and later sell it off if you wish to move. (some cooperatives have caps on how much higher you can sell it for compared to your purchase price, others do not)
But in the end, the one thing that makes housing more expensive, that outbids cooperatives for housing, and that increases the scarcity of the market, is for-profit landlords.
The only way you get any true positive change on down payments, housing prices, or housing availability, is to completely ban all for-profit landlording.